Apologies, Brownies, and Catching Up...

First of all I owe someone an apology. Over 2 weeks ago while I was traipsing around the Maritimes I received an award from a friend and fellow blogger. It is the Liebster Award.

I received this award from Linda at Stitch Lines

Sorry Linda that I neglected to thank you or even acknowledge this honour.

When I received this from Linda my first thought was, "Oh no, what do I have to do with this?" After a bit I started wondering just what was a Liebster award and who is Liebster anyway? So I searched a bit... and no one seems to know the origin of this blog award but it is meant to recognize and honour blogs with 200 followers or less. The word Liebster is of German origin and means "favourite, beloved, dearest". It is an award you receive, but also one you pass on...pay it forward so to speak. If you receive a Liebster Blog Award you are asked to choose 3-5 bloggers and send them one as well. It is meant to highlight small blogs, so the blogger receiving the award links back to the giver and tags 3-5 people. 

Thank you Linda  

There is no obligation to continue this award. If it is not your cup of tea, that's ok, but I am going to recognize a couple of blogs that I enjoy. 

Holly is a wonderful artist and quilter. She is always trying something new and scatters her post with lots of nature pictures and recipes.

Charlotte  is a fairly new blogger but has some wonderful purses and bowls she has been so enthusiastic over lately and I love how she puts colour together.

Sheila  has a lovely upbeat blog. She always has lots of pictures, and interest much the same as mine. We have ever met, but I am sure we would be kindred spirits.

Check them out, and be sure to say Hi.

Last night was our monthly guild meeting and it was my turn to help provide goodies for coffee break. I brought brownies and a few people expressed interest in them so I thought I would give you the recipe. 

Hershey's 5 Minute Brownies

3/4 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp baking soda

* 2/3 cup of veg. oil divided

1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

1 1/3 cup flour

1 tsp vanilla

chopped walnuts or pecans

Stir cocoa and soda and *half of the oil in large bowl. Add boiling water. Stir till thckened. Stir in sugar, eggs and *remaining oil. Stir in remaining ingredients. Spread in a greased 13 x 9 pan and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. **Frost and garnish with a half pecan.(optional)

**Usually I keep a can of Betty Crocker choc. icing on hand for days when I am in a hurry, but when I make my own I use this recipe.

"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup cocoa

3 cups icing sugar

1/3 cup milk

1tsp vanilla

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. add icing sugar alternately with milk. Beat to spreading consistancy. Stir in vanilla.

Stir in a SMALL amount of additional milk if needed.

These brownies are my "go to" recipe when I need something in a hurry that is sure to please almost everyone. Can't go too far wrong with chocolate...

Last week I had a friend"sleep-over" while Mr. O was away on business. She wanted some help with a project she had put  "on hold" awhile back. I cleared my design wall and "we" spent the better part of 2 days working away at it. I use the word "we" laughingly, because "Me" came up with ideas and "She" executed them.Coming up with ideas is easy...making it happen is another thing altogether but Glenda is a master quilter and she made it look easy.

This was a tin can challenge we started a few years back. You pick a theme, make a block, and add it along with a few fabrics to a tin can and then pass your can along to your friends. The cans rotate and as you receive each can you make a block according to the owners wishes. 

We had a get together and got to open our cans a year after originally passing them off to our friends.

Glenda had requested small blocks with a cottage/cabin/woodsy theme. After she received her blocks she was so pleased with them she decided to incorporate them into a larger project. 

The canoe and one of the bears was the inspiration for this section.

One small deer, a few trees, and couple stars inspired this section.

A paper pieced pine, 3 birdhouses and 3 little birds was the kick off for this.

Angels, acorns, log cabin blocks, stars, a squirrel and a cottage came together like this...and on and on it goes until this is what is on the wall...

Coming up with ideas is easy...making it happen is another thing altogether but Glenda is a master quilter and she made it look easy. 

She left it on my wall and will be back next week to try to finish most of it.  Don't you love how it is looking? 

Well done Glenda!

Blogger's BLOCK OF THE MONTH!

(Writer's block that is...)
In the 19 days since my last post I am sure I have sat in front of my computer at least a dozen times to post and ...nothing; nadda, zero, zilch. I just could not come up with any inspiration to write. There was lots of news, a few pictures, but NO words. Today is really not much different but I just decided that I would force myself. The funny thing is this; when I blog daily it makes me want to keep at it, but when I get away from blogging, it is just so hard to get back at it. Much the same as my eating and exercise regime. Boy have I bombed at that lately! Up until the retreat weekend I had 14 pounds lost. Needless to say I fell off the wagon big time. But hey it is Monday and we all know Mondays are a great day for starting over. So,(I know I shouldn't start a sentence with So, but...) let's start over. New day, new week, new goals!
What have I been doing? Let's back up a bit...
Retreat was absolutely fantastic! We have the best bunch of quilting ladies ever! We (Sue and I) had mentioned a few times that this would be our last year coordinating a "full fledged" retreat. We have 2 retreats a year and one is chocked full of activities and goodie bags and fun stuff and the other is what we call a "no frills" retreat. As you can imagine the first one takes a lot of work and planning and the other is much much less work in preparing; set up a menu with the centre, a seating plan, a room plan and collect the moneys. Done! While at retreat we get to work on our projects instead of keeping busy with retreat activities so it is more productive for us as well. The ladies are happy with having 2 "no frills" retreats a year so that is what we will do.
Because it was our last year coordinating a full retreat the girls wanted to surprise us with tokens of appreciation, and surprise us they did!
It seems every time I left my work station there was a gift there upon my return. I jokingly said to the girls that when I returned home I would be expecting Mr. O to be leaving me little gifts on my chair every time I vacated it.
These ladies were so creative and thoughtful in their gift giving; home made fudge, chocolates, cookies and jellies; soaps and creams, hand made gifts such as selvedge potholders, crocheted donut pin cushions, sewing and travel kits, gift certificates, note cards, books, ornaments and fabric, homemade laundry soap and many other things! I can safely speak for Sue as well as myself to say we felt truly humbled to be the recipients of such wonderful attention.

There were some great projects being worked on. Everything from totes to baby quilts, table toppers to queen sized quilts, bindings to borders.

auditioning borders

Some of the ladies call this their "winter vacation" and decorated their work stations accordingly. If you enlarge this picture, you might get a smile from their sign...

Great participation in the mystery project and we have a wall of fame to prove it!

Next up are random shots of the weekend.

Alice won a years subscription to Quilter's Connection magazine! (my project on the design wall in the background is all done but the final border..YAY!)

See all these chemo caps?

These three ladies devoted a large part of their retreat weekend to making them. Bravo ladies! My hat's off to you. (no pun intended.)

 The gang!

Home Sunday. Tuesday I drove to Halifax; Thursday to Moncton; home on Friday. Drove back to Moncton on Tuesday. Home Wednesday evening. Thursday and Friday and Sunday I had company...I may not have been blogging but I have not been sitting around gathering dust!

Some Funny Motivation

Came across these online...thought I would share.

Finished the last job for retreat. Just need to buy a couple things and pack everything up. I haven't totally decided what I will bring to work on, but I best make a decision pretty soon...Just 2 more sleeps!

HI, My name is Wendy and I have a drinking problem...

I do not drink enough water! ...and that is a problem. Every morning I promise myself I will drink more water and then before you know it, the day is gone and I am thinking "I can't drink now, I will be up all night."
I have been trying to reduce my weight ( and who isn't? ) since "forever" but more recently just after Christmas. I have 14 pounds gone, which is a good thing but when I look at how much more I need to lose it just seems like an impossible task.

However I have been thinking a little different lately; it's like a lot of things in life. It takes dedication and hard work. 

I have a small poster on my bulletin board beside my sewing machine; It says "Quilts take a really long time to finish if you don't work on them." Losing weight and getting fit and healthy is the same way.

I have looked at quilt patterns and thought how much I would love to make them but thought, "wow! way too involved or complicated or advanced for me to do" but you know when you break it down into blocks the job becomes much more manageable.(this is one of quilts I thought used to be way too much work and involvement and now it is finished and proudly displayed on my sofa)

That is how I am trying to handle this challenge in my life. I know I won't ever be a runway model, but I can work at being a smaller, healthier, stronger version of who I am now. One of the things that will help me is drinking more water.

This is my LuLu Lemon shopping bag. It is full of quotes but one is of particular interest to me. Top left hand corner, just under the wide white rectangle...take a better look...

We all know what happens to a plant without water...remember what happened when I had to go away suddenly for a family emergency and Mr. O forgot to water my outdoor plants and flowers?

This is what happens when you don't hydrate enough... 

...and this is what happens when you don't hydrate at all. Scary eh?

Speaking of flowers...check out the flowers Mr. O brought home to me for Valentine's Day. He knows I love to have fresh flowers on the bathroom vanity...

So as I said earlier, yes I have a drinking problem, but I am working on it. I will aim for at least 5 glasses of water today and maybe more tomorrow. 

Cheers!

..part two of Feeling Sheepish

I had planned on writing this on Saturday but...but...(here we go again)
I hear Science programs dealing with the earth's axis and how the degree of tilt has changed...Do you think it has possibly shortened the days or speeded them up so that we really don't have 24 hours in them any more? I only ask because I don't seem to get as much done in a 24 hour period anymore. I know it could be that I am trying to cram too many things into a 24 hour period; it could also be because I am older slower than I used to be but until I have proof otherwise I am blaming it on the earth's changes...
Still working away on retreat stuff...starting to feel panic that I am forgetting something very important, but I guess I will find out soon enough. Just 4 more sleeps!
It is a bitterly cold day and a perfect one to stay in and get some last minute things tended to.
I neglected to mention on my last blog post that I won a give away from this Blogger . (Take some time to browse through her blog archives...she has some fantastic photos of Prairie landscapes and how she interprets them in fabric.) Monika is a fantastic art quilter; she does amazing thread painting; she almost never misses a day of blogging; is always positive and upbeat AND she is Canadian! She has been published in a couple magazines and had a give away of a quilt kit she designed and had featured in the magazine A Needle Pulling Thread. It is the perfect prize for me because it is a combination of embroidery (something I love to do) and piecing (something I need to practice more).

I am so happy this kit has come to live at my house! Thanks again Monika!

I have had a friend and former neighbour visiting me from Newfoundland. We have spent many, many hours quilting in the past and it is such fun to have her back again. We of course have been up to our old tricks...staying up till all hours of the night with old movies on the television, playbooks and phones and all kinds of technology to keep us "connected", snacking on popcorn while we sew till the wee hours of the morning, only to get up and do it all over again. Cam will be staying with me until after retreat and then bright and early Monday morning we head to Halifax to spend the day with a friend who is recuperating from surgery and then back to Moncton to deliver her safe and sound to her husband who is working in Moncton for awhile. Cam has been working away on a few baby quilt she has been commissioned to make. Here is her progress so far.

Are they not cute? In her down time she has hand stitched the binding on a dozen placemats and a table runner, worked on her knitting AND been helping me with my retreat stuff! This has definitely been a working holiday for her...

Thanks Cam! It has been fun!

Feeling Sheepish

I have a list of excuses, stories,  reasons for not blogging in so long but really, do you need to hear them?

Thought you might like to see/hear what I've been up to though...

I sent off a package to friends and family with 7 knitted scarves and 2 pillowcases that I made. It's nice to receive mail for no reason. I like to think it brightens a winter day.

I have also been working on a group project with my quilting buddies. 

The blocks were made up from the stashes of 11 ladies, but we managed to make it come together quite well and then the Countdown to Christmas fabric made a perfect border!

We used some of the leftovers for the back.

One member of our little group turned 60 a while back and we were a bit late in getting things happening, but we finally finished it and presented it to her on Tuesday evening at a local restaurant where we all met for supper before guild meeting. Deb's birthday was in December so this is a perfect quilt for a December birthday...dont-cha think?

Happy (Belated) Birthday Debbie!

Also been slaving, puttering away at guild projects. When you are making cute things x 45 it takes awhile; so it is slow going, but we are almost ready. Good thing too, because retreat is just 7 sleeps away!

We are pretty excited over our goodie bags this year, we have managed to come up with some great buys and ideas, so I think the ladies will be quite pleased.

Obviously I cannot show them now, but later...I promise.

I also tested out the mystery project pattern. (again I can't show it yet.) The usual procedure for us is this: Sue writes out the mystery project and I am the tester...works well for us and in most cases we get the bugs worked out before presenting it at retreat.

I zoomed in to one of the pieces and you can see some of the 6 required fabrics I worked with. I am so pleased with it that I will be making a few more for gifts.

I have also been working away at my PhD (projects half done). 

I finished 2 little ones (thought I would finish a couple small things to motivate me on to larger ones). I can't show them yet, because one of them is to be a "Secret Sister" gift for retreat.

This is one of the quilts I had just begun a little over 2 years ago just before Mom's accident. Obviously it was filed away for a rainy day. No it hasn't been raining here, but it was still a good time to get back at some half done projects. Eight more blocks to finish up and then I can start assembling this puppy. Hope to get it on the master bed at "Winterpast" when we open up in the spring.

Well, it would appear I do have a problem...I don't show up to blog for weeks and then when I get here I can't shut up...so I'll try to be back tomorrow with the rest of my comings and goings.

to be continued.................